Successful cities

Floreat Preston

Why some cities thrive while others slump

IT IS not, despite the odd Victorian gem, the most charming of English cities. But Preston, a Lancashire mill town known for a 19th-century confrontation between workers and owners so stark that Karl Marx commented on it approvingly, and for living conditions so appalling that the American presidential hopeful Mitt Romney’s great-great-grandfather, a Preston carpenter, converted to Mormonism on the spot and emigrated, has been one of the most successful.

In 1901 Preston ranked in the bottom 25% of English cities and towns on a measure that takes account of economic distress, low-skilled employment, the ratio of manufacturing to service-sector jobs, property values and entrepreneurial activity, according to a new report by the Centre for Cities, a think-tank. By 2011 it had climbed into the top third, improving more than all but one of nearly 60 cities. By contrast Bradford in West Yorkshire, a good comparison as it was as dependent on wool as Preston was on cotton, fell from the top to the bottom quartile. Why?

A good skills base is the most reliable predictor of economic performance, says Andrew Carter of the Centre for Cities. After that infrastructure (mainly transport) and diversification matter most.

Preston’s skills were only middling as the 20th century dawned, and still are. But Bradford’s were and remain worse, and its entrepreneurial élan has fallen off (see chart). Preston is well-connected, too. With four motorways nearby and London two and a bit hours away by train, there are few places in Britain as well served, says Alasdair Rae, a geographer at Sheffield University. The same goes for diversification. Preston has long been a market town and administrative centre, as the newer Bradford never was. It moved early into various sorts of engineering, which is why BAE Systems now has two factories in the area.

Dumb luck plays a part. In the 1960s Preston built roads and otherwise prepared for a new town that never happened. As a result, it had sites ready when firms started looking for premises near new motorways. And only timing prevents Preston from having a hole in the ground instead of a city centre, as Bradford does. A regeneration scheme took too long to get planning permission, and the leading retailer pulled out before the bulldozers moved in. In blighted Bradford acres were demolished to make way for a shopping centre that remains unbuilt.

These days Preston is touting for smaller-scale investment to rejuvenate its centre. Like other mid-sized cities, during the boom years it created lots of private-sector jobs, up 16.2% between 1998 and 2008. But they were mainly in sprawling operations on the edge of town. City-centre jobs actually declined, and with them the city itself. This matters, Mr Carter argues: skilled knowledge-workers, in particular, like to cluster in centres, and the spillover is what most boosts growth.

Private-sector demand is now flat and the public purse flatter. And central government is betting on big-city regions to drive growth, as the recent batch of “City Deals” giving metropolises more powers and cash made clear. Bradford has been swept up by its neighbour Leeds, points out Joe Manning of the New Local Government Network, a think-tank. Smaller Preston has no such deal, and it is too far from Manchester or Liverpool to ride their coat-tails. Will the city and others like it be left behind?

Not necessarily. “There’s a strong industrial heart beating here,” says Edwin Booth, chairman of Booths supermarkets group and of the Lancashire Enterprise Partnership. The LEP plans to develop the advanced-engineering sector, with the help of two new local-enterprise zones. Preston has been reinventing itself since 1179. It shows no sign of stopping now.